The L.A. Times music blog

Jerky boys and girls: New Boyz, Rej3ctz and more lead a new youth movement

June 12, 2009 | 6:00
am

Mainly in the hands — and feet — of urban kids, krumping and clowning are making an evolutionary leap.

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By all accounts, Sunday is still a school night, but none of the few hundred
teens who took over a block in downtown's deserted warehouse district in early
May seemed to care. Many of them stayed out past midnight, done up in bleached
afro mohawks and tight turquoise pants, hoping to get some camera time in the
video forNew Boyz's song "You're a Jerk."

The sunburned film crew had
been working all day, starting on a residential street in Inglewood that
basically had to be shut down because of the crowd. The only promotion for the
shoot happened a day earlier, when Ben J and Legacy, the two teenage members of
New Boyz, announced the address in the away messages of their AOL Instant
Messenger accounts. Asked if he expected such a turnout, DJ Skee, the video's
executive producer, replied, "I had no idea."

"You're a Jerk" is a simple
but appealing concoction. There's little to it besides a methodically pacing
keyboard line, twitching electronic drums, some serious bass and a couple of
17-year-old rappers who deliver their lyrics in a manner that borders on blasé.
Yet the song has become the best bet to bring national attention to jerk music
and the dance style associated with this L.A.-born sound.

As a dance,
jerkin' is bouncy and loose-limbed. Moves like dips and pin drops revolve around
nimble lower-body work. The reject, the staple jerkin' move, can be best
compared to doing the running man, a late-1980s dance-floor classic, in reverse.
Of course each dancer has his individualized way of jerkin' -- some more
acrobatic, aggressive or suggestive than others.

Male-dominated dance
crews such as Action Figure$, U.C.L.A. Jerk Kings, LOL Kid$z and the Ranger$
make names for themselves by battling other crews and by uploading self-produced
videos to YouTube. These clips are largely improvised showcases, since after
claims of stealing moves, the most common attack leveled against another crew is
that its videos are choreographed.

"You can practice if you want to, but
people will think you're weak," said Ranger$ founder Julian Goins, 16. "It looks
like you're a robot."

Jerk culture has been spreading around Los Angeles'
high schools and all-ages clubs for more than two years, but it's because of
"You're a Jerk" that the music industry started paying attention. "You're a
Jerk" isn't the first jerk song, but it was the first to get play on L.A.'s
urban radio stations, the first to break through in non-local markets from
Phoenix to Birmingham, Ala., and the first to signal to other jerk music artists
that fame really can extend beyond MySpace and house parties.

"When
'You're a Jerk' got played on Power 106 [in March], that's when this coalesced
as a culture," said Shariff Hasan, the 30-year-old filmmaker behind "Jerkin," an
upcoming feature film set in this world.

A new
direction

This current generation of teenagers is the first to come
of age when neither Los Angeles nor New York is the dominant city in rap music.
This reality not only makes the youths more open to the influences of hip-hop's
regional variants like snap music from Atlanta or hyphy from Northern
California's Bay Area, it also helps break down the conventions of what L.A. rap
is supposed to sound and look like.

The majority of jerk music is
produced in home studios on personal computers, using relatively accessible
software such as Reason and FL Studio. Breaking from the gangster rap that L.A.
popularized, it's unabashed party music with lyrics that are flirtatious and
salacious. It can be incredibly explicit, with all-female groups like Vixenz
Ent! and Pink Dollaz coming off just as raunchy as their male counterparts.

For these teens, wearing the skinny jeans associated with the jerkin'
scene is nearly a political statement.

"When I was in high school . . .
the artistic kids wore dark clothing, had a certain haircut and when you walked
into the cafeteria they kept to themselves at their own tables," said Todd
Moscowitz, executive vice president of Warner Bros. Records and president of
hip-hop subsidiary label Asylum Records. "What's interesting to me is that now
the artistic kids, instead of being shunned, they're the cool
kids."

Asylum has invested heavily in jerk music: The company made it a
priority this summer to break New Boyz nationally, signed groups Rej3ctz and Cold Flamez and is looking at the other jerk music acts that have been
multiplying over the past few months.

While established stars such as
Kanye West and Lupe Fiasco have provided a path for flouting hip-hop dogma about
sonics and appearances, they are individuals, not a growing youth trend. "I hope
jerk becomes an experimental place for urban music," Moscowitz said. "Anyone
willing to walk into a Los Angeles public high school with skinny jeans and
bright purple hair is clearly willing to take chances."

Crazy about
New Boyz

Two days after their video shoot, Ben J and Legacy of New
Boyz sat in a classroom at Sierra Vista High School in Baldwin Park, surrounded
by posters about the dangers of smoking and steroid use. They recounted how they
met at Hesperia High School in San Bernardino County, where they were part of a
nearly 20-member group that made Southern California gangster rap and dressed
the part.

About 11 months ago, the two split off and decided to make
music that they thought girls would like. "They buy music and men just listen,"
said Ben J, who wore a red leather jacket reminiscent of Michael Jackson's in
the video for "Thriller."

Picking up on the growing popularity of
jerkin', they made a song called "I Jerk." When it didn't take off, they came
back with "You're a Jerk," which caught the attention of DJ Carisma, who brought
it to Power 106.

"I play at a lot of high schools and I'm around kids a
lot. Everybody kept asking for this song and it was strictly because of their
MySpace," she said. "I went to [DJs] E-Man and Felli Fel and said, 'How could we
not be playing this? This is the hottest song in L.A.' "

"You're a Jerk"
is now one of the station's most requested songs and is getting about 60 spins a
week.

In February, the duo began appearing at Power 106's basketball
fundraisers for local high schools. At halftime they performed "You're a Jerk"
while roaming the court with cordless mikes, then they'd play in the game's
second half (changing into shorts from zebra-striped pants) and finish with an
autograph session.

As the school year went on and New Boyz's popularity
grew, the crowds' response became more fanatical. During the Sierra Vista game,
school officials decided that there wasn't enough security, so the postgame
autograph session was canceled. As New Boyz left the court at the end of the
game, students swarmed the pair, thrusting pens in their faces and flashing
digital cameras. Ben J and Legacy ended up throwing their T-shirts into the mob,
partially as a distraction to get away.

After they were mobbed a second
time trying to leave the school, a girl in checkered red and white shorts crowed
to anyone who'd listen, "I touched their butts, I touched their bodies, they're
so sexy." Farther down the yard, another girl who hadn't been so lucky miserably
said to her friends, "I wish we were there. I wish everything could be rewinded
back."

Rej3ctz from the start

On Memorial Day weekend, the
three members of Rej3ctz were in Kenneth Hahn Recreation Area in Ladera Heights
for a "function" -- jerk's catchall term for any party, anywhere. DJ Goofy,
whose events are considered the jumping-off point for jerk culture, had
organized a picnic, but the portable generator had run out of gas, so the
turntables were silent.

Though in their early 20s, Rej3ctz members
Mowie, Pee Wee and BOUNCE are considered elders in the scene. As they tell it,
they played an essential part in its beginnings.

Despite the growing
interest in the jerkin' movement, many of the details about its origins remain
murky. What is certain is that the dance style known as jerkin' predated actual
jerk music, and that before L.A. artists began making music specifically to jerk
to, the usual soundtrack was hyphy.

The most common explanation about
where jerkin' came from is that it's a mutation of gang dances like the Crip
walk. While Rej3ctz do say that growing up amid that culture in South Los
Angeles affected them, they offer a different story.

They all started off
clowning and krumping -- krumping being the last major dance style to emerge
from Los Angeles, though its success was limited because it wasn't tied to any
specific style of music. They briefly appeared in David LaChapelle's "Rize," the
2005 documentary about those forms of dance, and during the making of the film,
choreographers Tone and Rich Talauega showed a dance style out of Chicago called
footwork. Rej3ctz explain that their take on footwork became the reject, or the
reject stomp.

Group member Mowie then spent three years touring as a
dancer for Madonna, and while he was away, the other Rej3ctz spread the style
around South L.A. at DJ Goofy's parties. Rej3ctz eventually started making music
as well, and while in Israel with Madonna for Rosh Hashana, Mowie met music
producer 7 Aurelius, who had crafted major hits for Ja Rule and Ashanti. Since
then, Aurelius has been mentoring and recording the group.

Rej3ctz take
credit for many of the fashions associated with jerk culture. Mowie stated that
the broader cultural exposure he got while touring led him to adopt a more
European look.

"Back in '06, '07, people weren't wearing skinny jeans in
our hood, and on 120th and Avalon I'm walking down the street in pointy boots,"
he said.

It even took the other crew members a while to follow him. "His
jeans got skinny, and my jeans took a month to get skinny, but they eventually
got there," Pee Wee said. "Then he was on lucrative skinny, and it took me
another month to get there."

Marketing themselves

Though
the members of the Ranger$ (formerly, and still popularly, known as Go-Go Power
Ranger$) say they have been jerkin' for less than half a year, they've quickly
become the city's most popular dance crew. They recently won the first organized
battle at Jerk Fest '09, which took place at the Madrid Theatre in Canoga Park,
but that victory has only caused more crews to challenge them.

"As a
group, we're taking care of business right now," said Jacorey "Corey" Williams.
"We not trying to be out here battling for respect, because we already got that
respect, and we already got that fame."

"We're trying to mainstream
jerkin'," Goins added.

In front of Hamilton High, which most of the
Ranger$'s core members attend, a photographer tried to keep the attention of the
eight teenage boys. Tammy Maxwell -- Goins' mother and manager of the Ranger$ --
referenced all the projects they had in the works: the producer she's secured to
handle their musical careers, the live web chat they have set up and the reality
show she wants to develop.

After the photo shoot, the Ranger$ walked
over to a nearby Taco Bell and filmed themselves jerkin' in the middle of the
street. Just 24 hours later, Goins had edited the footage in Windows Movie Maker
and uploaded it to YouTube. And 24 hours after that, it had 289 comments and
12,516 views.

To say that those in the jerk music community are shrewd
makes the culture sound calculated, but these young, predominantly African
American performers are ambitious and think about marketing
themselves.

"The whole movement is about all-around entrepreneurship.
That leads to individualistic expression," Hasan said. "And jerkin' is
individualistic expression."

Radio play

JHawk is the top
producer in jerk music right now. He decides whether to respond to the
approximately 15 requests for backing beats he receives each day based on a
group's MySpace stats. He'll only get back to artists who have at least 2,000
friends, more than 50,000 profile views and more than 100,000 total plays of
their posted songs. "I'll look at your comments too," he said.

Though he
might be a respected career booster, JHawk is also a skinny 17-year-old who is
currently finishing his senior year at the music academy of Hamilton High School
and preparing to attend Cal State Northridge in the fall. He makes his music on
a Dell computer he's had for about six years. When his grades slip, his parents
forbid him from spending time in his studio that's really a converted garage
space in the back of their house.

With the success of "You're a Jerk,"
jerk music artists recognize that their next goal is to get a new song on the
radio, and for many of these teenage groups that won't happen until they make
their songs less adult. JHawk works closely with the all-female quintet Pink
Dollaz and he's been encouraging them to clean up their language.

"The
[previous] lyrics kind of backfired," he said. "We did a new song called
'Trendsetter.' Before I posted it up, I made sure to type in all capital
letters, C-L-E-A-N."